The groundwork has just been laid for a future Europe blanketed in high-speed 4G coverage, with the European Commission ruling that EU members must allow phones to access 4G services over the frequencies currently used for 3G and 2G deployment.

Basically, this decision would block countries from requiring LTE or WiMAX to run on their own, segregated bands, like Verizon has done with its LTE network in the US. Both 900MHz and 1800MHz bands already share 2G and 3G data services; while adding LTE into that same space will decrease resources available to legacy services, apparently the European Commission feels that the choice of what kind of mobile data you want should be left up to end users, and the important thing for it do to is to make sure that all its member countries allow networks to offer users that choice.

This spells great news for the future of 4G in Europe, as it means we should continue to see the production of smartphone hardware that is network agnostic, able to cross borders and hop carriers at a user’s discretion.